Table Of ContentAnimals, Biopolitics, Law
Lively Legalities
Typically, the legal investigation of nonhuman life, and of animal life in
particular, is conducted through the discourse of animal rights. Within this
discourse, legal rights are extended to certain nonhuman animals through
the same liberal framework that has afforded human rights before it.
A nimals, Biopolitics, Law envisions the possibility of lively legalities that move
beyond the humanist perspective. Drawing on an array of expertise—from
law, geography, and anthropology, through animal studies and posthuman-
ism, to science and technology studies—this interdisciplinary collection
asks what, in legal terms, it means to be human and nonhuman, what it
means to govern and to be governed, and what are the ethical and political
concerns that emerge in the project of governing not only human but also
more-than-human life.
Irus Braverman is Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Geography
at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. She is author
of Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine (2009), Zooland: The
Institution of Captivity (2012), and Wild Life: The Institution of Nature (2015),
and co-editor of The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography (2014).
Space, Materiality and the Normative
Series Editors: Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and
Christian Borch
Space, Materiality and the Normative presents new ways of thinking about the
connections between space and materiality from a normative perspective.
At the interface of law, social theory, politics, architecture, geography and
urban studies, the series is concerned with addressing the use, regulation
and experience of space and materiality, broadly understood, and in par-
ticular with exploring their links and the challenges they raise for law, poli-
tics and normativity.
Books in this series:
Spatial Justice: Body, Lawscape, Atmosphere
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
Urban Commons: Rethinking the City
Christian Borch and Martin Kornberger
A Jurisprudence of Movement: Common Law, Walking,
Unsettling Place
Olivia Barr
Forthcoming:
Placing International Law: Authority, Jurisdiction, Technique
Fleur Johns, Shaun McVeigh, Sundhya Pahuja, Thomas Skouteris ,
and Robert Wai
Spacing Law and Politics: The Constitution and
Representation of the Juridical
Leif Dahlberg
Animals, Biopolitics, Law
Lively Legalities
Edited by Irus Braverman
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
a GlassHouse book
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2016 selection and editorial matter, Irus Braverman; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Irus Braverman to be identified as editor of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Animals, biopolitics, law : lively legalities / Edited by
Irus Braverman.
pages cm. — (Space, materiality and the normative)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-138-94311-7 (hbk) — ISBN 978-1-315-67273-1
(ebk) 1. Animal rights—Philosophy. 2. Human-animal
relationships—Philosophy. 3. Animal welfare—Law and
legislation. 4. Bioethics. I. Braverman, Irus, 1970– editor.
K3620.A97 2016
344.04'9—dc23
2015030106
ISBN: 978-1-138-94311-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67273-1 (ebk)
Typeset Baskerville
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Gregor
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Foreword
“Life” and “the Living,” Law and Norm xiii
CARY WOLFE
Introduction: Lively Legalities 3
IRUS BRAVERMAN
1 The Regulatory Life of Threatened Species Lists 19
IRUS BRAVERMAN
2 Probiotic Legalities: De-Domestication and
Rewilding Before the Law 39
JAMIE LORIMER
3 Governing Jellyfsh: Eco-Security and Planetary
“Life” in the Anthropocene 59
ELIZABETH R. JOHNSON
4 Tracing Bacterial Legalities: The Fluid Ecologies of the
European Union’s Bathing Water Directive 79
CHRISTOPHER BEAR
5 Crow Kill 99
ADAM REED
6 Nonhuman Animal Resistance and the
Improprieties of Live Property 117
KATHRYN GILLESPIE
viii Contents
7 Lively Sanctuaries: A Shabbat of Animal Sacer 135
ELAN ABRELL
8 Multispecies Families, Capitalism, and the Law 155
EBEN KIRKSEY
9 The Confict of Human and Nonhuman Laws 175
RICHARD JANDA AND RICHARD LEHUN
10 Lively Agency: Life and Law in the Anthropocene 193
ANDREAS PHILIPPOPOULOS-MIHALOPOULOS
Afterword
Lively Ever After: Beyond the
Cult of Immateriality 211
DAVID DELANEY
Notes on Contributors 218
Index 21
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book was born during the 2013 Annual Law and Soci-
ety Association meeting in Boston. Listening to presentation after presen-
tation, it became painfully clear to me that the sociolegal community, at
least the hundreds of scholars present in that particular room, seldom paid
attention to anything other than human subjects (with the exception of
corporations). A quick survey that I conducted then of two central law and
society journals, Law and Society Review and Law and Social Inquiry, backed up
my initial intuition: of 265 articles, 165 book reviews, and 63 review essays
published between 2008 and 2013, only two were dedicated to questions
concerning nonhuman animals. Other nonhuman organisms have typically
been even less visible in sociolegal scholarship.
This book is an attempt to engage prominent thinkers from a variety
of disciplines, who have been dealing with questions about nonhumans in
their work, to consider the role of law in the lives of nonhumans and the
potentiality for lively legalities that take such lives into account. The book
collection emerged from a two-day workshop in Buffalo, New York on Sep-
tember 11 and 12, 2014. Before, during, and after this workshop the vari-
ous contributors—anthropologists, geographers, environmental historians,
and legal scholars from the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, and
Australia—engaged with each other’s work and with the diffculties of talk-
ing across disciplinary divides. It was particularly challenging to talk about
law in this context, for this has largely been an unexplored terrain. The
contributors bravely took on this task, working in collaboration to make this
unique collection possible.
I have many people to thank without which this collection would have
not been possible. First and foremost, I would like to thank the contribu-
tors of this collection for their intense involvement in this project, which
went far beyond what a typical collection entails. Special thanks to Jamie
Lorimer, who helped me come up with this idea and assisted in the invita-
tion stage, and to Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos for being there
with helpful advice for the more diffcult editorial decisions. David Delaney
